Solar Sailing PDF: Technology Dynamics and Mission Applications

An introductory text and technical reference on solar sailing. The author assesses the benefits and limitations of solar sailing and comes to the conclusion that it really does offer the possibility of low-cost space missions, impossible for any other type of conventional spacecraft. The idea of solar sailing has been around for decades. In the 1920s, Soviet pioneers of astronautics suggested using vast sails to harness the pressure of sunlight to propel spacecraft to cosmic velocities. The solar wind is very tenuous, so practical solar sails would have to be vast structures of extraordinarily low mass and near-perfect reflectors. Finally, over 70 years on, solar sailing is being taken seriously as a means of spacecraft propulsion.